The Monorail Gets a Second Life in São Paulo

Image: Bombardier

Just in time for the 2014 World Cup, the Brazilian city of São Paulo is getting a monorail.

They’re testing trains on the 17-mile Silver Line (also known as Line 15) to prepare for regular service. Unlike monorail systems that more tourist attraction than useful transit, the automated Silver Line is designed to move 48,000 passengers each hour each way between two major suburbs when it opens in March.

The test runs come just three years after the city first inked deals with a consortium of contractors and suppliers to build the monorail, and just in time for more than 3.6 million tourists to descend on the city.

But the benefits aren’t just for soccer fans. São Paulo is a rapidly growing city with the second-largest public transit system in South America. Currently, it can take nearly two hours to make the journey between Vila Prudente and Cidade Tiradentes by car. When the monorail is accepting passengers, that time should be cut to 50 minutes. Half a million passengers a day are expected to ride the new Silver Line.

The monorail was a good solution for a city that had to solve transportation issues in a hurry: Digging more underground tunnels would have been too expensive, and streets were already too clogged for enhanced bus service.

Interoperability has always been an issue for monorails—their trains can’t travel on the same tracks as traditional subway cars—but that’s not an issue in São Paulo. The Silver Line monorail will be part of a whole new monorail-based transit system, including a new proposed line to the airport.